


Sirens

by TytoVertigo



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Hellblazer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 21:05:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17905625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TytoVertigo/pseuds/TytoVertigo
Summary: John hates flying. Don't forget those duty-frees.





	Sirens

The Newark airport is in as much a flurry of activity as the nicotine starved receptors in John’s brain. People bounce around, talking, shouting over the crowds and each other. Half garbled foreign voices blast over loudspeakers at every gate. Electric zaps, screaming nerve endings, shivers like ants crawling under his skin, all bombarding him like somehow it’ll make him smoke sooner. Because the usual itch on his fingertips, on his lips, in his lungs isn’t bad enough. No, he’s got to have the pounding migraine and severe nausea to go with it. The rage is required. The cold sweats are a necessity. When he purchased plane tickets two days ago, he didn’t expect symptoms to come along with them. Symptoms, and twelve and a half hours of screaming children, belching passengers, and bad weather. Just his luck he forgot to buy nicotine gum.

The fluorescent lights from customs leave a hum in the back of his teeth. It rattles the migraine in his skull, stirs up the scant contents of his stomach so the idea of smoking becomes as much a relief as it is a worry. A flood of stimulants rushing his brain, a rugby team about to tackle an old man. Someone would be sick, and it wouldn’t be the rugby team.

“Con...stan...tine,” the customs officer is an old, fat, purple putty-nosed neanderthal who speaks every word he scribbles. “Country of origin?” He rocks in his little seat, oozing over the sides. It’s almost eight in the evening but he’s drinking from the same coffee mug he’d used earlier in the day. The coffee drips on the side are dry, the mug is cold, and the man’s breath is beginning to smell like disinfectant. He eats popcorn from a vending machine. Chews with his mouth open. Squelching. Smacking. Wet.

The sounds stab into the base of John’s skull. “England,” he says through gritted teeth.

The man looks John up and down, and John can see his reflection in the glass that divides them. He’s got scarecrow straw for hair, and patchy stubble on his chin and cheeks. Dark circles stain around his eyes like ink in leather. Heavy trench coat slung over his shoulder, rumpled shirt with dirt stains and god knows what else, and his tie hangs from his back pocket with his phone and wallet. A filthy, near empty duffle bag sits beside his feet.

“Reason for visit?” The man asks.

John raises an eyebrow. “Taking the colonies back for queen and country.” His tone is dryer than whatever's in the man’s mug. It’s beginning to burn the hairs out of John’s nose.

The man sucks his teeth, and slurps corn kernels from his gums. “ _Bizz-a-niss_ ,” he writes. After taking another sip of his alcohol-with-a-dash-of-coffee, he swallows loud and smacks his lips. “Anything to declare?” He leans forward, his little metal rolling chair screaming beneath him, to get a better view of the duffle before taking a handful of popcorn and inhaling.

“Other than you’re a twat?” John asks. His hair starts to stand on end. His lip curls, his eyes darken.

The man’s face turns bright red. “What did you just say to me?” Spit and crumbs spray across the glass.

John’s jaw flexes and his eye twitches. Magic pours off him. Psychic tendrils creep from his buzzing, overdrive mind. “Just that you’re a bloody twat. Also, after you toss all your paperwork on me in the bin and let me get the fuck on so I can smoke a _fucking cigarette,_ you’re gunna’ go vomit on your boss’ desk so he knows just how pissed you are at work. And you’re gunna’ do it with a _smile_ , aren’t ya’, mate?”

Sure enough, the man gives a big, wide smile. He chucks all of the papers into the shredder, and they’re destroyed with a hungry mechanical growl. Then, the man heaves himself from the chair, huffing and puffing, and waddles back to his supervisor’s office. John needs a cigarette. He needs the nicotine, he needs to stop being in withdrawal, but there’s one thing he needs just a little bit more.

The sounds of gagging, splattering, nasty thick popcorn vomit splattering across metal desks and linoleum floors, followed by the screaming, cursing, heaving, and shouting. John grins, and felt a little warmth pool in his stomach. Not happiness. Schadenfreude.

Though, if you ask him, he’ll tell you it’s justice or some other lie. He takes his duffle and gets the hell out of the airport as fast as he can go. No smoking indoors, but that doesn’t stop him from having a cigarette between his teeth before he’s out the door. He caught himself trying to flick his lighter three times inside. Force of habit.

The door shuts behind him, and a gust of arctic wind blows through him, blows out his lighter, blows his cigarette from his teeth and down the sidewalk until it’s out of sight.

“Bollocks!”

“Need a smoke?” Someone taps his shoulder, hold’s an open pack of Newport’s in front of him. John goes cross-eyed trying to see them. The dark hand holding the box belongs to a bold woman who’s got at least an inch on John without her heels, let alone in them. “Mr. Collier?” she asks, red lips curling into a toothy grin. “Mr. Reed sent me.” Her eyes are the same shade as her lipstick, and silver lines glitter across her face, like she walked through a spiderweb.

John stares at the cigarette being offered to him. “Ta’, but no, menthol gives me the shits.” He has to fight the wind to get his coat on before he can dig the pack of Silk Cuts out from the inner pocket. It’s no show of grace by any measure, but the young woman still offers John her lighter when he’s finally got a cigarette again. And John doesn’t have the energy to be picky or tell her no. He takes the light and sucks down smoke and tar and formaldehyde. He let’s it settle in his belly like a stone, let’s it set his lungs ablaze like a forest fire. His head spins on the inhale. Sparks flit across his skin. The world tilts. On the exhale, everything starts to smooth out even, and the sparks settle to a hum that spreads through his veins until he can focus again.

“My name’s Arachne,” she says, flicking her lighter closed. “This is for you.”

John takes an envelope from her. On the front of it, in smudged handwriting, are his initials. Inside is a hotel room key and a postcard with an elaborate painting of mermaids lounging in rocky shallows between a cave and a desolate shipwreck. On the back, in the same handwriting, was a note:

 

_Back in Gotham on Monday. Consider this payment for the delay. - M.R._

 

“On behalf of Mr. Reed,” Arachne begins, “your stay with us has been paid up through the weekend, and twenty thousand dollars has been credited to your account to spend how you’d like between the casino, bars, and the hotel’s… other amenities. Not to mention a personal driver is available twenty-four seven. Shall we go?”

John almost chokes on his cigarette. He keeps flipping the card over, waiting for “syke!” to drip off it in bloody red letters. But it never does “Where the hell do you think I’m going with you?” he asks.

She gives that sneaky grin again. “Is it your birthday, Mr. Collier? If so, it’s a wonderful gift, I must say.”

“It’s not me birthday. Where are we going?” he asks again.

Arachne holds up the card again, tapping the cave on the front. “Here.”

**Author's Note:**

> More tags and warnings will be added as chapters are updated. No spoilers, kids.


End file.
